Category: Cornucopia

One of the great benefits of having Nate Oman and Frank McIntyre as regular bloggers here at T&S is that they can rapidly and thoroughly devastate the flakey assumptions which underlie my repetetive calls for social arrangements which prioritize public goods and community maintenance over individual choice and economic growth. This is a good thing:…

If you’ve never heard of Jay or Jay’s Journal let me explain. Jay’s Journal is a slim volume, published in 1979 and edited by adolescent psychologist and Provo resident Dr. Beatrice Sparks. It’s a series of journal entries that detail a sixteen year-old Mormon boy’s descent into the occult, culminating with his encounters with an…

Is secular knowledge a spiritual distraction?

Today I heard a well-known Christmas carol, and it occurred to me that the carol’s underlying story was incredibly ahistorical. In fact, it is roughly the opposite of what we know happened. Or rather, it is roughly the opposite of what most Christians know happened.

Ryan Bell has just posted about some fishy virus-containing e-mails that he received, allegedly from Greg Call, Nate Oman, Daniel Bartholomew. It looks like there is a virus somewhere in the bloggernacle. This could be as simple as a bloggernacle participant using an infected machine that is sending virus e-mails with false “From” data. Or…

Over at some other blog there is an interesting thread on thrift that got me thinking of my own family’s tortured relationship to the Mormon thrift ethic.

My first two posts were mostly devoted to large-scale pieces; this one is for miniatures, carol collections, and other minor or miscellaneous loveliness.

It’s time for the post that I am sure you have all been waiting for on that perrenial hot-button issue of the Mormon intelligensia: the relationship of the Gospel to welfare economics.

Well, perhaps now we’ll see if, as discussed at length on this site, there is anything particular a Mormon can offer to discussions of stem-cell research or family welfare policies. President Bush has just nominated former Utah governor Mike Leavitt to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. My guess: don’t expect to see Mormon…

We’re pleased to introduce Shannon Keeley and Brian Gibson, our newest guest bloggers and our first co-blogging team.

Along with all the glorious choral music of the season, which we’ve praised recently at T&S, Christmas is also a time of gift-giving. We make long lists of presents to give to those we love, trying hard to fulfill everyone’s Christmas wishes. Lots of toys, clothes, CDs, books and flannel pajamas get purchased and carefully…

Check your 72-hour kits, everyone. Over the weekend I bought and started reading a book because Adam linked to a positive review of it in the National Review.

Last year at this time I posted on the topic of “Tithing Settlement.” Although I strive to avoid repetitive posting, I trust that most of our current readers were not around at the time, and I never received an answer to my question. So I am trying again.

Jed W.’s term as a guest blogger has come to a close, and I am sure that I speak for all us in thanking him for his insightful and provocative posts. I learned in Church today that Jed and his wife Shauna are expecting their first child next summer. The current debate in the W.…

I am particularly fond of an old Jewish folk story called Esperanza’s Bread.

Yesterday I mentioned Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Hodie’, but did not rhapsodize about it. Allow me to rhapsodize:

This year, on an impulse, I picked up a menorah and candles, and we’re trying out a new (at least, for my family) tradition — Hanukkah.

I want to thank you all for your very generous and interesting comments over the last two weeks during my time in the guest blogger’s chair. Everyone has been most congenial and welcoming. I hope to come back for the guest blogger’s reunion. For my last post, I’d like to

And now for a very serious topic. Which T & S bloggers are like which types of cheese?

I witnessed a very powerful illustration of the vanity of the pride of the world the other day, or at least I witnessed it until I realized that I was probably wrong.

So, umm, I sort of dimly know what Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby sound like, but the voice that means Christmas for me is John Shirley-Quirks’s.

A couple of days ago, Bob Caswell reposted at BCC a wonderful old post of his, dealing primarily with the complications of missionary work in an area (in this case, Bulgaria) where there are significant racial, social, and economic factors which get in the way of preaching the gospel to everyone equally. In the comments…

Are Mormons a “myopic� people? The historian Richard Poll first suggested the possibility in an article on Mormon personality published many years ago.

To prove that engineers have a sense of humor, I send the following to my family every year at Christmas. I wish I could say I wrote it, but I didn’t, and don’t know who did. Perhaps you’ve seen it before. If not, enjoy.

Yesterday the W$J ran a story on “microinequities” — “the subtle putdowns, snubs, dismissive gestures and sarcastic tones that can sap motivation.” Life is full of microinequities, and Church life is not a safe haven.

We are soon approaching the year when we’ll celebrate the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth. As we do so, we should also reflect back on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and the legacy of that extraordinarily chaotic period. In The Politics of American Religious Identity, Kathleen Flake vividly illustrates that in 1904 and…

Recent news reports indicate that former CES instructor Grant Palmer will be facing church discipline. Any time that church discipline comes into the news, the conversation inevitably turns to the secretive Strengthening Church Members Committee which is said to maintain files on church members suspected of intellectual improprities. In a recent and lengthy blog post,…